Saturday, July 07, 2018

'Pro-choice' Sen. Susan Collins offers up excuses for supporting nominee to overturn Roe v. Wade

Hunter 
Daily Kos Staff
Sunday July 01, 2018 · 4:22 PM EDT
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Maine Sen. Susan Collins has premised her career on being a would-be “moderate” Republican. She has repeatedly claimed to be “pro-choice” and against the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision acknowledging women’s rights to abortion; that decision is now in imminent jeopardy with the retirement of swing-vote justice Anthony Kennedy and the public promise by Donald Trump to appoint judges who will overturn it.

So Sen. Susan Collins took to the Sunday shows today to try out an assortment of excuses for why she will be voting to confirm a Trump Supreme Court pick who will, in fact, end that right. While vowing that she “would not support a nominee who demonstrated hostility to Roe v. Wade”, her litany of caveats and excuses make it clear that that’s exactly what she’ll be doing–she just doesn’t want voters to hold her responsible for her vote to do it.

The premise of her argument boils down to arguing for plausible deniability. Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, Collins claimed that Donald Trump “told me in our meeting that he would not ask” his nominees their thoughts on Roe v. Wade. Incredibly, Susan Collins appears to believe that Donald Trump can be taken at his word, but the promise is meaningless. The list of nominations Trump is working with was produced by the hardline anti-abortion Federalist Society; each of them was already screened by conservative hardliners as preferred activist-styled judges willing to overturn existing law not only on Roe, but a wide array of conservative priorities. Anyone the White House chooses from the list will, by definition, be the preferred nominee of anti-abortion hardliners.

This was also the ruse she attempted on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulous, where she claimed that a nominee “who would overturn Roe v. Wade would not be acceptable to me because that would indicate an activist agenda.” Again, this is a meaningless and preposterous statement. The candidates have already been screened for that activist agenda by an activist conservative group. The whole premise is to have an activist agenda. If Collins supports the nomination of a hardline-preferred activist, she cannot simultaneously claim she was unaware of the activist part.

Read more
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/7/1/1777182/--Pro-choice-Sen-Susan-Collins-offers-up-excuses-for-supporting-nominee-to-overturn-Roe-v-Wade

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